Larry Cohen Blamed Best Seller’s Botched Final Five Minutes for Its Box-Office Failure

Scandals & Feuds3/5 wildness

Larry Cohen Blamed Best Seller’s Botched Final Five Minutes for Its Box-Office Failure

Best Seller / Larry Cohen / 1980s

Best Seller began as Larry Cohen’s attempt to turn the uneasy premise of Strangers on a Train into a modern crime thriller. Cohen wrote the original screenplay, initially titled Hard Cover, with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in mind, but the project languished in development at several studios before Orion Pictures finally produced it in 1987. Director John Flynn later substantially rewrote Cohen’s script, and although Cohen praised the eventual casting of James Woods as the unnervingly intimate hitman Cleve and Brian Dennehy as police detective-author Dennis Meechum, he remained sharply dissatisfied with the film’s climax. In the finale, Cleve invades the mansion of corrupt political power broker David Madlock to rescue Meechum’s kidnapped daughter. After Madlock shoots Meechum, the girl runs toward her wounded father while Madlock holds her at gunpoint; Cleve surrenders his weapon, is shot, and dies in Meechum’s arms after declaring, “Remember I’m the hero.”